Living wage campaign

In February 1999, the Harvard Progressive Student Labor Movement launched a four-month living wage campaign for Harvard employees. Its members based their demands on a distinction between the federal minimum wage ($5.15 per hour at the time) and a wage considered “livable” in a specific city of residence (then set in Cambridge at $10.25 per hour, plus benefits and adjustable for inflation). A report released by Harvard on Feb. 20, meant to stymie any outcry, revealed that only 2.7 percent of Harvard’s “regular employees”—those who worked more than 17.5 hours a week—made less than $10 an hour.The report had the opposite effect.

Supporters of PSLM’s campaign latched onto the data showing that 49 percent of Harvard’s “casual employees,” its part-time or temporary workers, made less than $10 an hour, often with no benefits. They also called into question Harvard’s increasing reliance on outsourced, subcontracted workers, who were not included in the data. Throughout the winter of 2000 the Harvard Living Wage Campaign continued to gain steam, bolstered by the support of prominent faculty, such as then-Du Bois Professor of the Humanities Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and then-Fletcher University Professor Cornel West ’74. By April, then President Neil Rudenstine promised to assemble an Ad Hoc Committee on Employment Policies.Yet, 13 months later, PSLM was less than satisfied with the Committee’s results. It recommended against increasing wages for Harvard’s workers, instead promoting the expansion of free education programs and the official launch of Harvard’s Bridge to Learning and Literacy.[3]